The Cat and the Snake
by LyricOcean
Summary: A young woman finds a door in her house that shouldn't be there. What lies beyond that door will SHOCK you!


It all begins with a door.

The door is oak, or something close to oak, big and old and heavy on its hinges. Intricate designs are carved into its surface, swirls and twists like an autumn gala, the door handle metal and curved. It's built into the side of the staircase. It doesn't open. Also, it's not supposed to be here.

"Mom, where'd that door come from?" Chloe asks, as soon as she lays eyes on it. Usually she's groggy in the mornings but this has startled her. Doors don't just appear like that. Or, shouldn't just appear like that, she guesses.

"What are you talking about?" Her mother asks. She barely takes her eyes off the TV. Chloe's stepfather, focussed on his newspaper with a distasteful frown, doesn't bother looking up.

"The door?" Chloe gestures to the oak intruder behind her. When this gets no response, she says again: "The door. The door behind me. It wasn't here yesterday. What's the deal?"

"Oh Chloe, that's been here forever," Joyce chastises when she finally looks up. "Don't be silly."

Chloe shakes her head, half convinced she's on a bad shroom trip. "Are you fucking with me?" She eventually asks, pale arms outspread in a challenge. The red of the tattoo on her arm acts as a rag to a bull, the desired effect.

"Chloe!" Her stepfather yells, slapping the newspaper down. His thick moustache twitches with irritation. "How many times have I told you not to use that language in this house?"

"David, you've seen the door," Chloe points at him, then runs both hands through her shock of blue hair. She can feel fear gathering in the pit of her stomach. "I've never fucking seen that door before today. Neither have you."

"I don't know what you think you're trying to pull-" David snarls, starting to rise from his chair, before he's interrupted by Joyce:

"Can I please just enjoy my breakfast with my family?" She snaps, as more of a statement than a question. She points at the both of her family members, her elegant fingers more suggestive of a queen than a waitress. "David. I need you to calm down. And Chloe!" She shoots her daughter an especially scathing look. "I don't want to hear any more talk about this door. It's always been here. You know that. I don't know what your _issue_ is this morning."

Chloe stands there for a moment, pissed off and confused, before grunting a defeated "Whatever" and leaving the house without breakfast.

On her way out the door, thrusting her hands deep into her pockets, she discovers a second oddity that morning - a gleaming black button she doesn't remember picking up. She casts it into the dirt of the front garden without thinking.

As she stands there on the grass, wind strangely chilly around her, hands shaking slightly as she lights a cigarette, for awhile she can only think one thing:

Chloe Price thinks, _"Fuck, I miss my_ dad _."_

* * *

Arcadia Ink is a relatively small parlour, complete with two artists and an apprentice, a small private car park, and the perpetual smell of lemon hand sanitiser. Chloe arrives slightly late after stopping to buy breakfast in town but nobody seems to mind.

She gets into her usual routine of answering emails, updating the Facebook page and bookings list, uploading the pictures taken yesterday. Eventually she manages to lose herself in the world of Arcadia Ink's social media. That first single hour of her job is nice, peaceful, and she almost manages to forget about the door.

Almost.

After the internet is held at bay, Chloe moves on to her least favourite part: cleaning. It's Wednesday, toilet cleaning day, and the artists never let her live down how much she hates it.

"You right, Chloe?" Dylan grunts knowingly when he sees her heading for the cleaning cupboard. Dylan isn't much one for talking or even smiling, but the two have a special relationship. Dylan was the one to give Chloe her first tattoo, the roses and thorns and skull tied up in the red ribbon that angered David so much this morning. And shit, now Chloe's thinking about the door again.

"I'm great. Hey, wanna give me a hand?" Chloe asks, miming throwing her scrubbing brush at him.

"Oh, nah," he grunts again, turning his attention back to a fox on a woman's arm.

Chloe cleans the toilets, mops the floor, washes all the windows, sweeps, and empties the trash into the dumpster out back. She's back just in time to witness the fox lady throw up all over the floor. Great. Chloe's just starting to clean it with tissues and trying not to gag when Fox Lady decides it's time for round two, and manages to puke down Chloe's shoulder on her hand. Double great.

"All part of the job, right?" The other tattooist, Roxanne, snorts when she sees Chloe's horrified expression.

The straw that breaks the camel's back, however, is just before lunchtime, when a blacklisted customer rings up. Keith Walsh came in a few months ago wanting a swastika, and seems to have taken their refusal to heart. The conversation begins with Keith's "Hey there, slut," and ends with an already pissed off Chloe screaming into the receiver and slamming the phone down.

"I'm taking a break," Chloe announces, and simply walks out the front door. Nobody stops her.

As she reaches into her pocket for her cigarettes, her finger touches something cold.

When she pulls it out, she realises it's another button.

* * *

"I think I'm going crazy, Max," Chloe says, as soon as she's sat down on the wooden bench next to her girlfriend. The day is sunny and cosy, like a content exhale. Forget-me-nots have started to spring up in clusters around the bench, dandelions doing the same across the entire park, giving it the appearance of a pool of congealed sunlight rather than solid grass. "You know how people say they're going crazy but they're just being over dramatic? I think I'm actually losing it."

"You're not crazy," Max laughs, tucking a stray lock of azure hair back into Chloe's beanie. She looks great today, thick brown hair gleaming in the sunlight and blue eyes twinkling on her freckled face in that ridiculously adorable way of hers. "You know who's crazy? My boss. He-"

"You're not listening," Chloe shakes her head, smacking her fists down on her legs. A bird chirps loudly in the distance, offended. "There's a door in my house."

"Yeah, I know, I've been there-"

"No, fuck!" Chloe shakes her head insistently. "I mean, a door that wasn't there before. Like, it just fucking… appeared."

"Doors don't just appear, babe," Max touches Chloe's arm, a mixture of amused and concerned. "It can't have just come out of nowhere. Maybe you didn't notice it before?"

"And on top of that," Chloe continues, like she hasn't heard, "There are all these buttons in my pockets. All. The. Time. I'm not putting those buttons in there. Fuck are they coming from? It's hella crazy, Max."

"They could be from the wash?" Max suggests, now with an arm fully around her girlfriend and lifetime best friend's shoulders. "You know what I think? I think maybe you're just tired and stressed out, and you know how you can sometimes get paranoid when you're tired?" Chloe shoots her a death stare, but Max just looks at her. "Well, you can."

"You're not listening to me."

"You know what I've been doing all day?" Max works at the local pet shop. It's not much of a pet shop, connected to the local veterinary clinic and making most of its money off scientific dog formula and de-fleaing pills, but it does still get the occasional batch of kittens or mice. "My boss ordered in - and this is a legitimate number - one hundred and twenty seven white rats. We've been run off our feet trying to figure out what to do with them all day. We ended up finding two massive tanks out the back, put the males in one and females in the other. I asked him, 'Vadim, why do we need so many rats?' And he says-" Max puts on a terrible Russian accent for this next part- "'I have vision, Maxine!' Because he still can't get my name right, you know, he goes, 'I have vision, one day white rats being needed and we are supplying! You will see, little Maxine.' God knows where he even ordered them from. Some hellhole. Now that." She pauses for emphasis. "That is what I would call crazy."

Chloe almost smiles. She knows she has a choice to. If she laughs at Max's story now she can get on with her day, maybe calm down a bit.

But now she's thinking about that door again, and her hands are shaking, and Max isn't _listening_ to her, so Chloe Price doesn't smile.

"Yeah, whatever, Max," Chloe makes a noise of disgust as she rises from the bench. "Catch you later."

"What's your problem?" Max yells after her, hurt. Chloe keeps walking.

She thinks, " _Do you want the whole list?"_

* * *

Chloe doesn't go back to Arcadia Ink. She texts Dylan some half-arsed excuse, that's she's not feeling well, and doesn't wait for a reply. They'll survive without her.

She walks along the beach for a while, until she can taste sea salt on her lips and there's sand in her shoes, then gets cold and starts heading into town. The sky is darkening like a bruise with the threat of rain but that doesn't bother her. In a mood like this she knows she could just walk forever and never stop.

She's not paying any attention to where she's going, her thoughts switching from the door to her father - a recurring topic whenever she's upset - and occasionally to whatever she's going to do with her life, because she has no idea what she wants and she can't work at Arcadia Ink forever, and shit, why'd she have to go and get expelled from school… when she finds herself standing in front of the Two Whales Diner. Her mother's workplace. For a while she just stands and stares at the flashing neon sign, trying not to cry or look at her reflection in the window. She may have stood there for a lot longer, if not for the voice that interrupts her.

"Hey, blue girl."

Chloe looks down. The voice is owned by a woman sitting on the pavement, wrapped in layers of dirty clothing like a shell against the world. She's clearly homeless, but her eyes are kind and she's not asking for money, so Chloe is curious. Funny, she was so deep in her own thoughts she didn't even notice her sitting there.

"Yeah?" Chloe grunts, limiting her syllables.

"You're Joyce's girl?" The homeless woman asks, as if she doesn't know the answer. Everyone knows Joyce's punk drop-out daughter. Reading Chloe's face, the homeless woman doesn't wait for a reply. "Chloe Price. I've seen you around."

And then she says, "You know, a great evil is attached to you, girl."

Chloe's veins turn to ice. She crosses her arms, lips moving soundlessly as she tries to reply. After a long pause, she manages to stutter out lamely, "Yeah, and his name's, uh, David Madsen."

What does that mean? Does this woman know about the door? About the buttons? Should Chloe say something about it? Or will she just look like a drugged up loser talking to some equally drugged up homeless woman outside a diner? Is the woman on drugs? Drunk? She doesn't look like it, but Chloe's head is spinning and she's not a good judge of reality right now, so maybe she's just overreacting and oh god, does that mean she's just going crazy?

The homeless woman smiles mildly, grey eyes twinkling with an expression Chloe can't place. Unconsciously, Chloe's hands go to her pockets. She flinches when her finger encounters the cold round object, even though she was expecting it.

Slowly, she brings the button out from her pocket, gleaming and perfect, and just holds it in front of her face.

"Be careful, blue girl," the homeless lady tells her simply. "Be very careful."

It's at this moment that Chloe decides she's officially had enough of today. She drops the button and leaves without another word.

On her way home she buys a bottle of cheap vodka.

All she wants now is blissful unconsciousness.


End file.
